


What a Thing to Choose (But Know, in Some Way, I'm There With You)

by FriendsandSpecialPets



Category: Adekan
Genre: Choose your own adventure I guess!, Could also be shipping, Kojiro adores him, M/M, Shiro is hungry, Vampire!Shiro, could be read as platonic if you want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 02:18:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17377712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FriendsandSpecialPets/pseuds/FriendsandSpecialPets
Summary: Kojiro finds Shiro collapsed from hunger, and he wants to help.





	What a Thing to Choose (But Know, in Some Way, I'm There With You)

When Kojiro finds Shiro on the floor of the kitchen, his first, fleeting thought is _now he’ll finally leave me._ Shiro’s face is twisted in agony, arms crossed over his stomach.

“Shiro,” Kojiro breathes. He pushes his friend onto is back, tugging his arms away. His police training has taught him to check for an injury before anything else, but when Shiro’s eyes settle on him between sluggish blinks, Kojiro sees they’re bright red.

_Oh,_ he thinks. The hands that were brushing over Shiro’s abdomen are laid flat, no longer searching.  _Oh._

“Officer,” Shiro breathes weakly. He swallows with clear difficulty, and the way the muscles of his throat work captivates Kojiro. He wants to lean over and press his ear to it, to hear it as well as see it, but that’s a trivial wish.

“How long has it been since you last fed?” Kojiro asks. In his head, his voice had sounded scolding, but it comes out shaky.

Shiro’s eyes shut. The circles under them are so dark they look like bruises. Kojiro raises a hand to draw the knuckles of his fingers over them, to make sure they’re not swollen or to try and soothe Shiro – he’s not sure which.

“’M alright,” says Shiro. His throat sounds dry, and Kojiro’s stomach twists with sympathy.

“So you were just napping on your kitchen floor, huh?” Kojiro asks. He doesn’t mean to sound as fond as he does. A weak smile tugs at the corners of Shiro’s lips.

“You know me, officer,” he replies, cracking his eyes open just enough for Kojiro to see the faintest hint of deep crimson. “I got too tired moving around.”

“Shiro,” Kojiro breathes. His hand finds Shiro’s without his having to look, and he gives it a squeeze. “You need to eat.”

“Will you cook for me?” Shiro asks, and Kojiro wishes it was that simple.

“I mean really eat,” Kojiro says gently. “You’ve gone too long without… real food. I can tell.”

Shiro’s head rolls to the side, away from Kojiro. His expression is impossibly sad. Kojiro wishes there was some way, _any_ way he could take even a fraction of his friend’s burden on himself, but he knows that even if he tried, Shiro wouldn’t let him. Shiro is considerate like that.

“Shiro,” says Kojiro again, and his voice is a little firmer this time. “Please. You have to eat.”

“Officer,” Shiro says. It comes out as a weak breath. “You can’t understand. You don’t know what it’s like.”

“No, but I know what it looks like when you haven’t eaten,” says Kojiro. He squeezes Shiro’s hand again, trying to pour some of his own strength into his friend. “It looks painful.”

“Officer,” Shiro squeezes his eyes shut. His voice seems to be catching on something. “Maybe it’s better if I don’t eat.”

Kojiro feels his stomach drop.

“What are you saying?” he demands. “Are you saying that you should starve to death? Do you expect me to stand by and let that happen?”

Shiro smiles bitterly. His eyes are still closed. Kojiro finds himself wishing he’d open them again. He knows Shiro doesn’t like to be seen like that, doesn’t like to look so different from a regular human, but Kojiro has always thought that the red of his eyes is startlingly beautiful. Somehow, it matches the rest of Shiro’s delicate but strong features.

_Let me see you as you are,_ Kojiro thinks.

“I know you wouldn’t, officer,” says Shiro after a second. “Gosh, you must be so angry with me for making you worry.”

“That’s right,” Kojiro responds. “After all we’ve been through, do you really think I’d let you...”

He can’t finish his sentence. He’s still clutching Shiro’s hand, and this time when he squeezes it, he’s seeking strength for himself.

_Please don’t leave me, Shiro_ , he thinks.

“I can’t go out right now,” says Shiro. “Not like I am. There’s a risk… I could...”

It takes Kojiro a second to understand what Shiro’s saying. When he does, the meaning pierces his heart like a needle. Shiro has told him before the consequences of being around humans after a period of starvation. There’s a chance he could go into a frenzy and attack the first person he sees, draining them of all their blood. He’d said it with his face turned away from Shiro, words falling from his lips like stones into a dark pond, and Kojiro had been struck in that moment how difficult it must be for Shiro. He spent his entire life not only guarding himself against the world, but guarding the world against himself. It was a heavy,  _lonely_ burden to bear.

_Share it with me_ , Kojiro thought.  _Let me take some of that from you._

“Okay,” he says out loud. “Okay.”

He’s trying to form a plan – there must be an animal or something he can lure into the house, something whose absence no one would miss – when all of a sudden he realizes that he doesn’t need to.

_Share your burden with me, Shiro_ , Kojiro thinks.

“Feed from me,” he says out loud.

Shiro’s eyes finally,  _finally_ fly open, crimson-beautiful like his hunger. His lips part in shock, and his fangs aren’t fully retracted. Kojiro can’t help but feel a pang of nervousness when he sees them, but he supposes that’s natural. They’d probably hurt, going in.

_But Shiro is hurting right now._

He’s already undoing the buttons of his collar.

“What are you saying?” asks Shiro. He’s so surprised it doesn’t seem to have occurred to him to be angry yet. “How could you – I couldn’t. I can’t.”

“It’s okay,” says Kojiro. He pulls the edges of his shirt back enough to bare his neck. “I’m offering.”

“No,” Shiro shakes his head once, emphatically, and the movement seems to leave him dizzy. His eyes go unfocused. “I can’t. I won’t do that to you. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Shiro,” says Kojiro. His hand finds Shiro’s again, and he can’t help the stab of fear he feels at just _how_ cold and how limp it is. “You’re hurting too. Don’t try to deny it – I know you are. I want to help you. Please let me help.”

Shiro shakes his head again, more weakly this time.

“No,” he says. “You don’t know what you’re offering.”

“My blood,” says Kojiro. As he speaks, he raises Shiro’s hand so that his friend’s long, graceful fingertips are resting over his throat. To counteract the intimacy of the movement, he adds, playfully, “free food.”

“No,” Shiro breathes, but Kojiro can see his resolve wavering in the way the muscles of his throat are trembling. “No, Officer. I can’t.”

Shiro had told him what being hungry felt like, once.

“It’s agony,” he had spoken into the darkness of the room, hidden by the shadows cast by his beautiful handicrafts. “It feels like the insides of your body are being removed and thrown away. You feel the strength bleed from every part of you. Your muscles cramp. Your head spins. You don’t feel _human._ ”

“Shiro,” Kojiro brings his other hand up to rest his fingertips on his friend’s cheek. “Let me help you. Please. I want to help you.”

“But it’s -,” Shiro is struggling for words, now, but he doesn’t look away, and somehow that seems like a good sign. “It’ll hurt.”

“That’s okay,” says Kojiro with a smile. “There’s no way it could hurt worse than any of the injuries I’ve gotten on the job.”

“This is different,” Shiro says. His fingertips brush, cold but soft, over the skin of Kojiro’s throat. His touch feels reverent. Kojiro leans into it, trying to impress his feelings into Shiro through touch. “It’s – it’s… different.”

“I know,” says Kojiro, and he _does_ , somehow. “It’s okay. Please, Shiro. Drink from me.”

Shiro’s eyes squeeze shut, and he lets out such a pained, hurting noise that Kojiro’s hand reflexively tightens in sympathy around Shiro’s wrist. Then, suddenly, impossibly quickly, Shiro is sitting up. His eyes are huge, and there’s a feral edge to them. His fangs are larger now, less human.

“Officer -,” Shiro whines. “I – I can’t -”

“It’s okay,” says Kojiro. He starts leaning into Shiro’s hand on his throat even harder before he realizes that, at their current angle, that will close off his throat. Instead he tilts his head back, baring his neck. “I know it hurts you. I want to help you. Let me help you.”

Shiro lets out a wild, half-strangled cry, and then he surges forward. He yanks his hand away from Kojiro’s throat and opens his mouth wide, but still, _still_ he hesitates. Kojiro looks down and meets Shiro’s eyes. Even wide and pained like this, they’re still beautiful. Kojiro smiles.

Shiro _bites._

It hurts. The pain isn’t as bad as Kojiro had braced himself for – Shiro’s fangs are so sharp they slide in easily. When Shiro pulls them out slightly, there’s the sting of a cut that shoots through his neck, but Kojiro stops himself before he can flinch. Shiro is hurting too. At least one of them deserves to feel better.

The pain isn’t lasting like Kojiro thought it would. He’s hyperaware of everything, suddenly – the weight of Shiro’s body, the feeling of Shiro’s soft, cool lips brushing against his skin, his own pulse rushing through his body. It occurs to Kojiro that he’s never fully understood what it means to be alive on the most basic level. He’s never taken the time to just feel the way his heart beats, the way the muscles in his chest expand and contract with his breath.

It’s – incredible.

His hand is still somehow clutched around Shiro’s wrist, and he squeezes for something to ground him. Every muscle in his body is relaxing, coaxed by the heat spreading from his neck onward. He feels impossibly light. He wishes there was some way to express this to Shiro, but when he opens his mouth, the only thing that comes out is a small gasp.

Against his neck, Shiro freezes. A second later he pulls back. The red is fading in small patches from his eyes, leaving Shiro slightly more human-looking.

“Hold still,” says Shiro, and then dives back in. For a second Kojiro thinks he’s going to be bitten again, and he finds that he wants that. But instead of a bite, Shiro begins worrying at him with soft kitten-licks and small, gentle sucks that leave wave after wave of pleasure rolling over Kojiro. The tension is coming back into his muscles, and Kojiro is too weak to fight it. He feels like a doll being pulled in the currents of a strong river. He wants – _he wants -_

Shiro draws back just enough to place what feels like a barely-there kiss against his skin, and Kojiro has never longed for another person more. The intensity of his want is overwhelming. He wants Shiro to hold him, he wants to be held by Shiro, he wants to entwine the fingers of each hand together, wants to press their foreheads together and count each of Shiro’s impossibly-long eyelashes -

Shiro pulls away, then, and takes both of Kojiro’s hands.

“How are you feeling?” he asks. “Does it hurt?”

Pain is so far from Kojiro’s mind that Shiro’s question makes him want to laugh, but he’s still dizzy from pleasure and he can only manage to smile.

“I’m alright, Shiro,” he breathes. “Do you feel better?”

“Worry about yourself,” Shiro grumbles. He lets go of one of Kojiro’s hands to brush over the spot he’d bitten. “It’s healing pretty quickly. In a few minutes there won’t be any mark left. Are you light-headed?”

“No,” Kojiro breathes. It’s not _entirely_ true, but he knows what Shiro is asking, and this doesn’t feel like being faint from blood loss.

“You should probably lie down, just in case,” says Shiro. “Can you stand?”

Oh yes, he has legs. He’s so out of it that this feels like a discovery.

“I think so,” he says out loud. Slowly, carefully he manages to unfold himself, giving his limbs a moment to adjust to having their regular blood flow back. Shiro stands first, reaching his impossibly-strong arms out to steady Kojiro, and his grip on Kojiro’s body is reassuring, another lifeline to his body. Kojiro nearly stumbles trying to get up, but it’s okay, because Shiro holds him effortlessly, keeping him from falling. He leans against Shiro’s body, warmer now that Shiro has fed, and allows Shiro to guide them both to his tatami. Shiro helps him lie down, too, and once he’s down he takes to smoothing Kojiro’s hair back from his face as if to soothe him.

“Thank you,” Shiro whispers. “Officer, I’m sorry you had to do that.”

Kojiro still isn’t strong enough to laugh, but he hopes Shiro knows him well enough to know that he wants to.

“I’m glad,” he says. “It makes me happy, knowing that I helped you.”

Shiro’s eyes widen momentarily, and for a second Kojiro thinks he sees the beginning of tears. Then Shiro shuts them and leans over so that he’s curled protectively over Kojiro’s head.

“Thank you,” he whispers again.

There’s so much Kojiro wants to say. He wants to bleed everything he feels into the air between them and let Shiro breathe it in. He wants to stay here like this with Shiro forever. But he’s tired, and there’s nothing weighing his body down enough to keep him from drifting off to sleep.

The last thing he sees before shutting his eyes is Shiro stretching out beside him, and the last thing he’s aware of is Shiro’s hand finding his.

_I’m glad I got to help you._

**Author's Note:**

> Me: why the fuck do I have so much to do this is bullshit
> 
> Me after a two hour nap: I feel refreshed so I'm gonna write fanfiction for a dead fandom!
> 
> The title is from Heartlines by Florence and the Machine.


End file.
